Marlin Firearms Co. To Close North Haven Plant

LAYOFFS

March 26, 2010|By ERIC GERSHON, The Hartford Courant

Marlin Firearms Co., a Connecticut gun manufacturer founded in 1870, will close its North Haven plant and lay off 265 employees.

A statement from Remington Arms, the North Carolina firm that owns Marlin, said the plant will close in mid-2011. The statement did not say whether the work will move, or be absorbed into other plants owned by Remington.

Remington agreed to buy Marlin in late 2007 and acquired it in 2008. At the time, the North Haven plant had 345 employees and a Marlin plant in Gardner, Mass. Had 225 workers.

Remington, which began in upstate New York in 1816 and later was based in Bridgeport, is part of a group of gunmakers owned by private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management, called Freedom Group Inc. Executives told investors in early 2009 that the profit margin in its firearms division had dropped, even as sales surged after Obama's election in part because of Marlin.

"This decrease was primarily due to an unfavorable product mix during the first quarter of '09 including product sales attributable to the Marlin acquisition," said Chief Financial Officer Steve Jackson, who also named other factors.

Marlin was founded by John M. Marlin, who worked in Hartford for Colt during the Civil War. In 1870, Marlin "hung out his sign on State Street in New Haven, manufacturing his own line of revolvers and derringers," according to Marlin's website. In 1924, Frank Kenna bought Marlin and the Kennas owned and operated it until the sale to Remington.

Marlin's brands have included Marlin, Harrington and Richardson, New England Firearms and L.C. Smith.

Legendary sharpshooter Annie Oakley, who toured with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show in the 1880s, is said to have owned a Marlin lever-action .22 repeater rifle.